Recent news of teen deaths in Cook County, IL and Queens County, NY.
Issues that need to be addressed with potential remedial measures:
1) How are these teens getting guns?
a) The Focus of Gun control laws in NYC and surrounding states.
Current Mayor of NYC, Michael Bloomberg, is the head of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG). However, what is this organization’s focus in why they want to gun control? Is it proper for them to punish LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS from having guns to protect themselves? One Ohio mayor resigned from the MAIG citing such problem of misdirecting its focus. That is not the issue. Bloomberg stated that MAIG’s catalyst were deaths of police officers. This is not the only issue! Its the entire community. And yes law enforcement officers are part of the whole community.
The issue is controlling those that are using guns for violence. NYC gun laws are very strict already. So, where is the problem arising from? There are more finite issues than just simply having laws that prohibit the citizens from possessing guns. It is shameful that for so many years gun control issue is such a hot debate (not so much anymore since the focus on terrorism) and no one has looked into more issues found below.
b) Gang-related violence issues. Here is another Cook County death of a 16 year old from beating.
1) Discipline from parents
There needs to be more accountability for parents to have their children stay at home and prepare their studies to not just keep them safe at home but to allow them to aspire to be a person better than their neighbor causing trouble.
A) Single parent homes (usually father is not the single parent supporting).
Why is there only one parent supporting the child(ren)?
A story of having no blood-related parental support.
NY claims to have an outstanding foster care program but that really is not the issue. Story of a teen who had gone through foster care, but wants to aspire to be a military paramedic.
2) Education and After school programs to protect the welfare of the youth and the surrounding communities.
There is a heavy stigma with mostly minority students going to a school with security checkpoints. This stigma already disturbs their focus to learn. There is more discussion in class about “did you hear about that shooting/stabbing” opposed to “hey how did you get to that answer for problem #2.”
A good example of why money should not funneled to large scale programs such as the Olympics.
Politicians need to help their respective communities and its community organizers that have been working so hard for it all to fall apart. There needs to be centralized and uniform focus on how to help our youth to aspire to be more than what they see on TV. They need to stay off the streets. Not every student can be an athlete. Thus, there needs to be different after school programs that focus on creativity, team building, etc. The next generation of youth is apathetic to become the next Neil Armstrong or even, Lance Armstrong whom aspired to be significant in their own right. Today, a great number of people (not only the youth) are focused on making the most money and being on top of the world in whatever they want to do whether its becoming the next Kobe Bryant or Lebron James. And especially if they can’t play ball, then they really don’t know what to do. What is available to them?
3) The youth cannot wait for things to come to them.
No comments here. It’s up to themselves.
Posted by jting 
Posted by jting 
